Building and running from source?

I'm interested in contributing to the project (and creating a branch of my own for a course I'm enrolled in). I have downloaded the source and built VirtualRouterClient. When I run it, I get an error that the service is not running.

So I set VirtualRouterService as the active project and run it. Visual Studio gives me the error, "Cannot start service from the command line or a debugger. A Windows Service must first be installed......"

Do I really have to run an installer every time I make a change to the service? There must be an easier way. And why is the codebase split between a client and a service? It seems like it might have been better implemented as a single unified
application that lives in the notification area.

I'm relatively new to MS application programming, so these are probably naive questions. But I'll take any help I can get.